


overqualified

by painting



Category: Original Work
Genre: Allergies, F/F, Gen, Original Universe, Pet Store, Sickfic, Sneezing, thieves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22327402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/painting/pseuds/painting
Summary: "Jesus.This is the hardest thing I've ever had to do.""Oh my god, uh— for real? You broke into the Dresden Castle.""Someone probably told you I broke into the Dresden Castle. People like saying I did because it sounds dramatic.""How'd you get in there, then?""I took a guard's badge," she says, holding the purse strings of her expression as best she can, "and just walked in through the back. And I wasn't having an allergy attack while I was doing it."
Comments: 3
Kudos: 22





	overqualified

**Author's Note:**

> if anyone has me on here and doesn't know me from freak world, sorry about my consistency of themes and if you dont have a huge boner for sneezing like us lucky ones then you might be happiest if you move along 
> 
> also here's a story about chicks this time because my repressed dykey little mind finally is allowing me to go there, bit by bit

"Could you not be so _loud_ about that, Violet, _s'il vous plait?_ "

The friendly bell attached to the front door pings a worn out greeting as an unnecessary patron wanders inside just late enough to have missed the shop assistant blaring out the sordid details of their business to the whole of the shop. Jocelyn feels a prickling at the edge of her nerves, agitation shining through the cloudiness in her head like a lighthouse beacon as she anticipates the effort it might take to manage Violet's ruby red, bow-shaped motormouth.

"' _S'il vous plait,_ '" Violet mocks, friendly, her voice high and whispered as though she's expressing an echolalic compulsion rather than a playful parroting, an urge to feel the words out in her mouth before she's allowed to actually process them. 

Once she does, though, she appears to merrily forget. 

"Hey, where's Michael?" she asks.

Jocelyn wonders why it took so much good-morning small talk for Violet to mention her own supervisor's absence.

"Clock tower," she answers, her voice blank and rushed, just before she turns around and jerks in place and fruitlessly attempts to repress the tenth sneeze that's come upon her in the twenty-five minutes that she's been standing at the cash register. In the same breath that she uses to sigh out the muted gasp she never fully took advantage of, she says, "I'm just filling in. We have two deliveries today, otherwise we'd leave the place to you."

The stack of bedding Violet gracelessly plunks down onto the counter slowly sheds a plume of straw dust into the air in front of her, which she doesn't bother to wave away. She stands back to survey its placement, then crosses her arms and pouts.

"Ick. Noooo thanks," she says. "I do _not_ want to be the boss for a day."

"No?"

"Of anybody. Even myself."

Jocelyn smiles. "You sure?"

"Yuck," Violet confirms. "Glad you're here instead."

"Makes one of us," Jocelyn replies. She curls her hand into a fist and holds it close enough to her face for her index knuckle to bump against the tip of her nose, which gives her enough of a sense of security to go ahead and sniffle fiercely. " _Jesus._ This is the hardest thing I've ever had to do."

Without noticing their company loitering in the back near the rat cages, Violet hollers, "Oh my god, uh— for real? You broke into the Dresden Castle."

"Someone probably _told you_ I broke into the Dresden Castle," Jocelyn says, for both the sake of honesty and impression management, just in case their patron is eavesdropping. She sniffles again when the infinitesimally scratchy particles from the store merchandise finally float into her personal space. "People like saying I did because it sounds dramatic."

"How'd you get in there, then?"

Involuntarily, Jocelyn squints, a shallow rush of air dashing through the sudden, thin gap between her lips. She stares into the blackness of the dilapidated countertop to try and keep enough light out of her peripheral vision.

"I took a guard's badge," she says, holding the purse strings of her expression as best she can, "and just walked in through the back. And I wasn't having an a _hhhhh_ llergy attack while I was doing it."

She reaches her threshold and sneezes turbulently against the flat of her hand.

"God bless you," Violet says, and Joycelyn barely restrains the next one because the cat's out of the bag and she needs to take some sort of action against the pressure in her head. It comes out furious and wet, bending her forward and pushing moisture to the corners of her eyes.

"Thanks," she says as she straightens up. "Sorry, I'm a little, uh…" She pauses to focus on tearing a sheet off of the paper towel roll on the floor next to the cashier's stool.

While Joycelyn swipes back and forth underneath her septum, Violet says, "Oh _no,_ that's okay," and carefully measures something that she pours into a bowl for the free-roaming cats that are probably hanging out somewhere in the back room. "That's all allergies, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"What are you allergic to?"

Jocelyn shrugs. "I always kind of avoided animals," she says. It's never felt like something worth being thoughtful about. "Probably cats or all the dried plants or something, I don't know."

"Nothing else bothers you?" 

"Nope."

"Ooh, lucky. A lot of people have bad hay fever all summer."

All Joycelyn can offer in response is another sneeze, just as high in volume as the one preceding. She pushes her bangs up off of her forehead after she's done it twice more, exasperated, wondering whether she'd mistakenly broken a dam by letting the first one slip through.

"Good _Lord,_ never mind. Bless you already," Violet says. The corner of her mouth twitches. A young couple steps inside through the door and Joycelyn mirrors Violet as she waves at them. "Oh, welcome, guys!"

They both wave back, the taller of the two offering a curt nod and thin, apologetic smile that indicates that they plan on being gracious and not buying anything.

"Hey," the shorter one says. Violet grins, eyes crinkling. Her mascara cracks and a fleck of dried, inky black falls from her lower lash onto her cheekbone.

Jocelyn isn't sure whether they know each other well enough for her to say something about it, so instead, she says, "Do you know those guys?" in an awful, drippy rendition of her normal voice, sinuses inflamed to the heavens and angrier than she's ever felt them. She can't do anything about it at this point.

"Yeah," Violet answers. "They come in sometimes to pet the cats. Should I send them out, chief?"

"'S okay," Joycelyn says. She hasn't seen anything but caged rodents and fish since she arrived, but she supposes there'll always be time to live her dreams. 

"All right."

"Yeah," Joycelyn adds decidedly. "It's fine."

"Are you sure?"

"Definitely. Want to distract me?"

Violet closes her mouth into a frown. "Huh?"

"You don't have to actually make any sales, you know."

She keeps her voice level so nobody listening in would think twice about their conversation, should they overhear something. Violet sways over and throws finesse to the wind.

"Oh, I have an idea. Can I draw you? How about that?"

Joycelyn searches Violet's eyes to try and determine her sincerity.

"Draw me?" she asks.

"Well, you steal art, so you must know something about it, right?"

"Oh, okay— I _steal_ art?"

Violet rolls her eyes. "I don't have to be part of the action to know how the operation works, girlie."

Jocelyn smiles back at her.

"You know what? I'm a pretty good artist," Violet continues. She slides a yellow sheet of paper from one of the shelves underneath the counter and places it on the surface too quickly for Jocelyn to see what's on its backside. Some sort of flyer, she guesses as she leans forward to watch Violet work. "You'll see."

Neither of them bothers chattering for a few moments, Violet swiping the clumsy ballpoint around on the page and ignoring the textured effect that the counter's uneven, bumpy surface is adding to her portrait. Jocelyn focuses on breathing evenly and figuring out which spot in the room she can rest and unfocus her eyes upon while she waits.

Their patrons are mostly quiet, whispering politely about something that probably doesn't involve anyone else and occasionally tapping on the glass of the fish tanks as their inhabitants swim back and forth. The outdated, ancient filters add a pleasant, moderately loud white noise to the sound space that Jocelyn tries listening to without thinking about how she can feel her sinuses vibrating to a similar rhythm.

Finally, Violet looks up to study Jocelyn's face. "Do you have to sneeze?" she asks.

That's embarrassing, Jocelyn acknowledges, but she realizes it's better to own it than to try and play pretend.

"Now I do," she says.

"Well, hang on," Violet instructs patiently. "I need to memorize your pose."

"Not the pose I want people remembering," Jocelyn says quickly, breathlessly, then she ducks her head down and gives into her distress. "Shit."

"Okay, well — ooh — I guess bless you anyway, even though you're a terrible listener, Jocelyn. Is that why you're a criminal?"

Self-consciously, Jocelyn laughs, kind of. It's more like a twitch of the chest. "Yup."

"Hmm, oh wow."

"Shit, sorry—"

With little warning, Jocelyn shudders forward again, this time thinking enough to hold her hand out in front of her face as a shield as she lets the next sneeze escape, sharp and persistent. She sniffles as she brings her hand down and her head up, a useless afterthought because whatever's clogging her airways won't budge through the claustrophobic, swollen spaces inside her head.

"Bless you," Violet hums, unperturbed. "Your hair's hard to draw."

"Sorry."

"Have you always worn it like that, in the undercut?"

Jocelyn clears her throat and says, "For a while. It used to be longer on top."

"Like mine?"

"Nah. It was never pretty like yours."

Violet's hand stills. She makes eye contact and says, "Your hair doesn't need to be pretty."

Although she can't articulate why, Jocelyn shrugs and leans back in her chair and sighs out like Violet's comment hadn't felt overstimulating to hear, like it had texture to it or something, like it was enveloping her from the inside. She looks at the ceiling.

"Thanks," she says.

"It looks good. I'm almost—" Violet responds brazenly, maybe a little too quickly, and then she jumps when the welcome bell chimes.

At first, Jocelyn assumes it's a telling of the pair of not-customers leaving, but Violet doesn't call out a friendly goodbye or any well wishes. Weirder, she doesn't offer a greeting, either, which is what prompts Jocelyn to survey the caller herself.

His posture says he could be one of theirs. It's loose in a way that seems intentional, and he's dressed well, in denim and plaid that are oddly crisp and sharp, certainly too much so for anyone visiting a pet shop on this side of town.

He's clean-shaven and wearing an earring. He doesn't bother sizing up the store.

"Joss?" he says in a heady tenor that sounds suspiciously smooth, like he's got the kind of charisma that a person hones only on purpose and never for the sake of integrity.

"Yeah," Joselyn says before she turns around properly, pivoting in the plastic stool and hopping off with her arms at her sides.

He nods at her and says, "You?"

"Yeah," Jocelyn says again. She clears her throat in a broken staccato.

"All right," he says. "Is Mike out today?"

"On call," Jocelyn replies.

"Eric?"

"Who's Eric? Are you fucking with me?"

He grins in a show of too-white, crooked teeth.

"God, stop it," she says. "You can't do that. We're not pals yet."

"Market closes at four," the man reminds her.

"Well, then it's a good thing it's only ten, huh?" Jocelyn replies. She shoves her hands into her pockets to keep from scrubbing her palms against the side of her nose. "Pull into my alley, man, okay?"

She offers a salute in his direction to establish some resemblance of casual, playful familiarity to anyone who might be watching. He tilts his head up in a nod and twirls around to head back to his car.

Once the door shuts, Violet says, "That guy is always so weird."

"Weird?" Jocelyn repeats as she glides across the store.

"Like an alien," Violet clarifies.

"He come in here a lot?" Jocelyn cuffs her sleeves and unhooks the back door key from its chain leading into her pocket.

"Sometimes. And he always makes these weird jokes," Violet says. "God bless you."

Jocelyn lowers her hands and sniffles. It's thick and crackling and doesn't really accomplish much, and she can't decide whether it's more embarrassing to show herself in a state like this in front of a tradesman of the family, or a beautiful civilian with a lack of volume control and a compulsion to wear high heels to her job at a pretend pet store.

"Thank you," she says, because the choice was made up for her by the universe regardless. "Uh, I'll be back in a sec."

"Okay," Violet says. She throws her voice to the front of the store. "Do either of you need any help?"

If the patrons respond at all, Jocelyn doesn't hear it as she steps into the establishment's sparse, windowless storage area and shuts the door behind her for privacy. She sneezes once more into her hands and lets herself indulge in it now that she's alone, bending forward and vocalizing her exasperation. It gives her little reprieve still, but there's at least peculiar satisfaction in its liberating nature.

From somewhere she can't see, a familiar voice asks, "Joss? Can you trade off?"

"Shit," Jocelyn replies. She doesn't bother throwing her voice, given the claustrophobic acoustics, and steps around a maze of shredded, junkyard cat trees to find the back room's exterior door. "Did someone leave that unlocked?"

She can't remember the name of the woman standing just to the right of the black rubber welcome mat, but they've done local business together before, swapping cash from her paintings for some of Columbia's best. She's maybe a decade older than Jocelyn and never seems to leave the area, despite looking like she belongs in a Pacific northwestern commune instead of the small town, conservative midwest.

"Cary gave me a key. We ran into each other at the dress shop," she says.

Jocelyn nods with narrowed eyes, features pulled tight as she pulls in a steady breath and then pitches forward into steepled hands.

"Sorry, fuck," she says before she's fully recovered. "Sorry, I'm fine. This _place_ makes my nose itch."

"Why do you work here, then?"

"I don't." Jocelyn turns around and retrieves a blank yellow envelope from one of the shelves. "Mike was called to play translator and nobody else was in town, so I got lucky."

"Doesn't he have a civilian assistant?"

Jocelyn scoffs.

"I don't want her touching heroin," she says.

The lady laughs and says, "Fair enough. Then I'll let you do the honors."

"Great."

She doesn't need to step closer to hand over her payment, and the tradeswoman slides a package out of what looks like a burlap sack that had been unevenly dyed with crimson. Unabashedly, Jocelyn sniffles with gusto, irritated and impatient, as she reaches out and accepts it.

"We good?" she asks.

"Say hi to Michael for me," the dealer answers. "Or Batti or whoever's picking up next."

"No one told me," Jocelyn says, "but they should show up later this afternoon. Take care."

"Of course no one told you. These men don't know what they're doing."

Accidentally, Jocelyn laughs. Something about the brassy, flagrant way this woman had said it is what gets her, and she wishes she had some way to communicate how much she'd appreciated the comment.

"I'll see you," she says to Jocelyn before she has a chance to figure it out. Jocelyn raises the package in a stupid, clunky wave goodbye before she shuts the door and returns to her demise.


End file.
